My Mojo!

I spend a lot of my time asking questions to find out more about other people so I thought it might be fun to do it for myself! Here goes…….

How would you define your mojo?

Mojo for me is being comfortable in my own skin and having the confidence to stick to my own lane. It’s so easy to get distracted by everything! What other people are doing and how they are doing it. My mojo is linked to my ability to visualise what I want and work towards it. It’s part of how I learn new things, deepen my self-awareness and frame my mistakes. It’s at the core of how I enjoy life and how I interact with the world around me. It’s openness, freedom and flexibility.

Have you always had mojo?

Yes and no! Everything I ever needed was always there but I had huge self-doubt and that became what I focused on. Always on the problem and what I was lacking.

I also think that being an Introvert affected how comfortable I was expressing my mojo…

I also think that being an Introvert affected how comfortable I was expressing my mojo, I assumed it had to be done in an extroverted way and that was terrifying. I spent alot of time working on how I looked to others on the outside, trying to make myself fit what I thought they wanted to see. Nowadays I’ve learnt that mojo is an inside out kind of deal. It’s how I live and move through my life that’s important to my mojo.

If your mojo was a colour/animal/place what would it be?

Colour orangey-red Animal – Eagle Place – A wide, open green space with an amazing view!

What does your mojo help you to do?

Everything! It helps me to make things happen, care for others, grow and learn, parent, be happy, make decisions, deal with challenges – it’s an absolute anchor point for me, a touchstone to come back to whenever I feel lost or without direction. I feel like it represents the very best of me, it’s more to do with a sense than a knowledge. I know it’s got my through 2020! Over the last year I’ve coped with my husband’s mental breakdown and the near collapse of our marriage, cared for my daughters, put plans in place to secure our financial future, kept my business going and negotiated the implications of COIVD and lockdown. A year on we are healthy, happy and enjoying living in the moment. There is no way I could have coped without my mojo – it’s helped me process the emotion and the overwhelm and help me find out what living my values feels like.

Is your mojo around all the time?

Yes but I don’t always pay attention to it. Self-doubt, perfectionism, people pleasing and the underlying sense that I’m never doing enough always lurks in the periphery. That means I have lots of rituals and habits to help feed and maintain my mojo. Starting the day with movement, going outside everyday, taking regular breaks, journalling, Mindfulness. The ones I have added this last year are a commitment to being sober and planning in ‘life’ before work, otherwise everything becomes work!

When do you feel your mojo most?

When I’m writing from the heart, hanging out with my family, in quiet reflection time, when I’m planning, outside walking my dog in the rain, when I’m belly laughing and everyday when I put on a pair of earrings – I have a collection of them and each day I choose a pair which reflects how I want to my day to be.

If you had to describe your mojo in 5 words what would you choose?

Grounded  •  Compassionate • Loving • Fun • Curious.

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More about Lisa

Hello everyone I’m Lisa! My favourite colour is orange, I love to cook, laugh REALLY loudly (much to the annoyance of my daughters) and walk my dog in the Cornish countryside. My business is called Change Your Badge I help entrepreneurs focus, plan and find their flow with mentoring & coaching support. My aim is to grow it one conversation at a time and I’ve been doing this with virtual coffee calls where I’ve met smart, funny, creative women full of mojo from all over the world! Let me know if you’d like to be my next call 😜

Find Lisa Online

• My website: www.changeyourbadge.com
•  https://www.instagram.com/changeurbadge/
• lisa@changeyourbadge.com

Creatively Fit

Just as there was a physical fitness revolution in the 60’s, we’re having a creative fitness revolution right now. Before the 60’s, no one intentionally engaged in aerobic exercise unless they were an athlete. Everyone else just did physical work or leisure… or nothing at all. In a similar way, we are at a phase of our evolution which absolutely requires that we innovate! Yet, our creative muscles are out of shape! As Pam Grout puts it:

Just as our bodies atrophy when we don’t use them, so does our imagination.

Awareness of current events and circumstances is overwhelming, so do you open up to possibilities, or is it better to narrow your focus? The strategy is entirely up to you. Whichever approach you take, remember to exercise your imagination! Again, as Pam says:

Imagination can take you anywhere. It can write a story that can change someone’s life.  It can design a building, compose a song, inspire a nation.

What can your imagination do today? What is one small action you can take to improve your creative fitness? From a lovely blog with 10 Unusual Creativity Prompts, try this one:

Play with verbs: On one side of a sheet of paper, write a list of 10 nouns. Fold the paper, and on the other side, write a list of 15 verbs associated with a profession, like a chef, a nurse, or a bus driver. Open the page and see if you can match up the nouns with the verbs in interesting sentences, changing the verb tense if you need to. The goal is to, “be aware of your verbs and the power they have and use them in fresh way.” (From Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg)

Join Spark Salon in the Village (that’s a link!) to have access to all (there will be 52 by year’s end!) articles in the Pam Grout Art & Soul Reloaded Series and receive notifications when new articles are released. Spark Salon  hosts a monthly zoom on 3rd Thursdays to share inspiration from creative mentors such as Pam Grout, Julia Cameron, Robert Moss and more.  We’ll recharge our artist souls, ignite our imaginations, and remember our creative magic! Check out Events for details!

the Aquarium hosts several live cams. if you go to the individual page for each live cam, it lists feeding times. some of the feeding times are narrated, just like you would experience if you were visiting in person.

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the open sea cam showcases a one million gallon tank, featuring a diverse set of open ocean animals rarely seen in an Aquarium. the room is dimly lit and plays relaxing music. i want to take a nap there too. local tip: on a hot day, the open sea exhibit is a great place to cool off!